The Mod Quad: Halloween

First of all, I have to comment on what an exquisite fall we have enjoyed this year. This is my most favorite time of year! I love the crisp juicy apples, eating pumpkin foods, the gorgeous colors, sunny but cool days, and piles of dry leaves on the ground. What made the season so exceptional this year was that we had a extended period without rain, so the leaves stayed on the trees longer than usual. Sadly, that has all changed now - but it was wonderful while it lasted!

So now to back track, after C's final soccer game I took the girls and their cousins Neo & Grace to the 1st annual Harvest Fest at the park. It didn't quite meet my expectations, but I guess for a first time event they didn't do so bad.

There had been pumpkin decorating, but all the pumpkins were gone when we got there. They had a little petting zoo set up, a treasure hunt in the hay where the kids could find candy (big hit), the presence of radio Disney and a few small sponsored booths - plus of course the regular playground equipment. They kids ended up spending most of their time on the playground, but they did enjoy taking a little hayride around the park once that was back up and running. The girls were also pleasantly surprised when the state Miss Teen visited. It turned out that she was C's swimming teacher this summer - and she remembered C by name!

On the hay ride.

Since the Harvest Fest didn't quite satisfy my fall itch, I took the girls to the local pumpkin patch a few days later. Each of us picked out the perfect pumpkin. M's and mine were small, round and perfect, but C's was 38 lbs and rather funny looking - but it did have a nice flat side for carving. I also picked up a huge bag of apples with great plans for apple crisp and applesauce. The apple crisp was good, but sadly I burned the applesauce when I decided to let it simmer longer to evaporate some of the excess liquid. The applesauce was quickly forgotten once I sat down at the computer. It was probably almost an hour later when my mom made the discovery. Bummer!!! You'd think that after all these years of burning foods, I'd finally follow my husband's pleas and set a timer. Nope, not gonna happen.

After placing the pumpkins carefully in the back of the van, the girls were free to play in the kids pavillion - riding John Deere tricycles, playing in the corn box, riding on the kiddie merry go round, and checking out the farm animals on display. I thought the little pigs (not pictured) were particularly cute.

A few days before Halloween our church had it's annual Trunk or Treat. I love that the girls get a couple of opportunities to wear their costumes. Grandpa Mod was pretty impressive in his too!

This Halloween my parents came into town to enjoy the festivities for the first time with the girls. It was a lot of fun to share this holiday with them!

Late Halloween afternoon I told the girls that they needed to clean their rooms before they could go trick or treating. C set off to work relatively quickly, but not her sister. M pretty much trashes her room on a daily basis. I swear that she must put on a minimum of five outfits a day - and everything ends up on her floor, including the clothes she had to dig past to get to the ones she wanted to put on. Needless to say, I am sooooo tired of putting the same things away day after day after day. So on this occasion, I told her that she made her mess by herself so she was going to have to clean it up all by herself. I figured that the incentive was big enough that she would manage to get it done. I repeatedly reminded her of what she needed to do, but she was simply not interested. Finally I warned her that if her room wasn't cleaned up, then she was going to have to take a bath after dinner and go straight to bed. Imagine my surprise when I heard the bath water running just a few minutes later. I left my dinner preparation to go upstairs to see if she was actually in the bath, and she was. Not long after she came downstairs in her pajamas, just as happy as could be.

So I eventually figured out that M did not want to go trick or treating. The little girl that only wants to watch movies that I assure her have scary parts, and begs me to sneak up on her and scare her when I come home from work didn't want to go trick or treating because she didn't want to be scared. Go figure. P left to take C out, and so Grandma decided to assist M in cleaning her room, at which point M decided that she did want to go out after all. So finally at 8:30 I head out the door to take my little three year old trick or treating. Yeah, what a good mom, huh?

I was surprised to see how many households were not participating this year. I wonder if it is the economy, the opening game of the local professional basketball team, or since it was a Friday if more people than usual were just going to Halloween parties. At any rate, the girls had to work a little harder than usual to earn their candy. Since M and I were among the last of the trick or treaters out, people were shoveling candy into her bag. On the loop one block up from us, people were telling us that they had only had 20 kids all night long. At each house, M would proclaim that she was too scared to go up, to which I would respond "ok, we can go home now." But then somehow, she would summon up the courage to knock on the door. At one house she knocked on the door at about 8:50. We could hear someone come to the door, and then the lights went out. "How rude!" I thought to myself. Then the lights flickered back on, and then off again. I turned around to see that the entire bowl of the valley was engulfed in darkness. Well, actually it wasn't that dark of a night, but all the lights were out anyway.

So we had an abrupt end to our trick or treating. Luckily it wasn't that far to get home. It turned out that there had been a car accident, and we were out of power for several hours. It did make for a fun twist to our Halloween night. I counted the left over rice crispy treats when I got home, and figured that we'd had 150 kids at our house.